A multitude of businesses, especially manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and other entities that deal in goods or items, often maintain a warehouse, shipping department, shop floor, or other area in which goods or items are received, manufactured, assembled, boxed, and/or shipped. Oftentimes, many different types of items that may be in various states of processing are located in close proximity as a result of efficient use of shop or warehouse floor space. To help identify each item, the entity owning the workspace may employ barcodes, QR codes, or other visual forms of identification to label the items, the shelves upon which the items are stored, the general area in which the items are located, and the like.
However, even with the use of such identification as a safeguard, difficulties may still arise. For example, an item may be mistakenly placed in a particular area of the workspace. A manager or other employee may subsequently happen upon the unfamiliar item and want to determine the origin or status of the item. In that case, the discovering employee may write down the identifying number of the item, walk to a computer workstation, enter the number as part of a database query, and read the resulting information stored in the database that is associated with the item. Many other examples exist in which the status, origin, or other information regarding an item is useful, and such examples occur with regularity within a single shop or warehouse floor.